


Curiosity Killed The Cat.

by FeliciaAmelloides



Series: A Oneshot a Day... [169]
Category: nonfandom
Genre: Crack-ish, Dark, Doesn’t Make Much Sense, Gen, God - Freeform, Plot Twist, Regret, nosy neighbour
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-14
Updated: 2018-06-14
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:55:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14941235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FeliciaAmelloides/pseuds/FeliciaAmelloides
Summary: I shouldn’t have been so nosy...





	Curiosity Killed The Cat.

**Author's Note:**

> This won’t make much sense. Please bear with me.

I wasn’t trying to interfere. I just wanted a look, that was all. I’ve always loved having a bit of a nose, people-watching, y’know? Stuff everyone does. Stuff that shouldn’t matter. 

But this time, it did.

My next door neighbour was someone I’d never really spoken to. However, I knew more about her life than I did my own. She went to work every day at 9:00 am on the dot, came home with a packet of crisps and a bottle of beer at 10:30 pm, and never left the house on her rare days off. I knew her schedule, her pets, the people who came over, the cars in her driveway... all of it.

I never expected my people-watching habits to have any consequences. Until they did.

I was looking out my window one evening when I saw my neighbour do something rather strange. She stepped out of her house and walked up to the bins outside, then lifted the lid of one. I watched, curiously, as she withdrew a large black box. She tapped in a few buttons, and suddenly the sun sank below the horizon, stars appearing in the sky. Then she shoved the box back into the bin and went inside.

Curiosity killed the cat, they say.

The next morning, just after she left for work, I crept round the back of her house and dug through the bins. Soon enough I found the black box. It was a strange contraption covered in little dials and switches with a small screen on the front. My fingers ran across the surface and all of a sudden another screen appeared, floating in the air like the ones in sci-fi movies. It had a huge map of the Earth on it, with time zones and maps of various conflicts spread out across the globe. What does a nosy neighbour do in this kind of situation?

Not what I did, that’s for sure.

I took it home.

Over the next several hours, I explored the box and everything in it. I found that I could zoom in on certain bits of the world up to individual people, and that there were various controls which changed things. I didn’t quite believe it was real, but I was excited to test it.

First of all I went outside and found the function my neighbour had used the previous evening to change it from day to night. I pressed it, and it worked. Sure enough, the sun almost immediately set and I could see stars twinkling in the sky. After a bit of trial and error, I figured out how to make it day again.

Then I made it rain. Then snow. Then a heatwave. And finally, another rainstorm but with lemonade instead of water. After that, I ran around trying to change all kinds of strange things, such as my neighbours’ genders and what breed of cat they owned. All of these things seemed to work. It was God in a box, and I loved it.

In fact, I loved it so much that I didn’t even remember to check the clock while having my fun. It was soon 10:30, and my neighbour was home. 

She saw me. Me, standing by her bins with a pair of wings and a slice of cake, black box held loosely between my fingers. I smiled and waved cheekily, hiding my anxiety. Now that I had my neighbour’s power, she couldn’t do anything to stop me.

That’s where I was wrong. My neighbour snapped her fingers and suddenly I fell to the ground, the box disappearing.

“Sorry to disappoint, honey. That box is just a control panel. I hold all the real power. Right here,” She pointed at her soul as my body turned to ice,

“Who are you?” I asked, feeling uncertain and a little guilty for messing with something I shouldn’t have. She just smiled, coldly.

“You shouldn’t mess with things you don’t understand.” I only just realised at that point that this had been our first ever conversation. It was strangely ironic.

“This,” She continued before I could reply, “Is an alternate reality. I created it for a school project, and have been developing it since then. I am just a simulation designed to mimic my creator. I act upon the world as a god, and people do things. You are a glitch by the looks of it. Either a glitch or a deliberate test to see if I can handle errors anyhow. Either way, I’m going to have to end your program.”

“What? N-no! That isn’t true!” I was feeling disbelief and oddly betrayal. I didn’t want to believe the nonsensical things my neighbour just told me. It hit me that I didn’t even know her name. No matter. Nothing matters now. But I had seen the box. I knew what it could do. And I knew deep down that she was probably telling the truth.

“You and I both know that it is. Goodbye, whoever you are.” My neighbour summoned the black box out of nowhere and hit a switch.

My world turned to black.

 

So how do I remember all this? 

I don’t. It’s an error message. I am an error message. Just a little blip in the program, watching the new version of me wander around and people-watch from an upstairs window with no knowledge of the truth of her world. Meanwhile, I exist in limbo between the lines of code, not knowing how I can get out or tell the others.

Maybe I’ll be removed again if I do get out. I don’t know.

I don’t know anything anymore.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m a bit out of it today.
> 
> Also I’ve been a day behind for like a week and I’m so sorryyyy! I’ll try my best to get everything updated once I’m out of a rough patch. I’m going to America the week after next and everything’s a bit of a rush while I try to sort that out :-/
> 
> Prompt- Someone nosy accidentally finding out something which makes their life obsolete.
> 
> Original Number- 79.


End file.
